Letters, Dec. 10, 1934

Tomato Justice

YOUR CHARACTERIZATION OF TOMATOGROWER WALTER P. CHRYSLER’S YIELD IN THE MARYLAND TEN-TON CLUB AS “SHAMEFUL” [TIME, Nov. 26], PROMPTS ME AS HIS PROSPECTIVE TERRAPIN DINNER GUEST TO RUSH TO HIS DEFENSE WITH CORRECT FACTS AND FIGURES. TOMATOGROWER CHRYSLER PRODUCED 9.05 TONS OF LOVE APPLES INSTEAD OF 7.95 TONS REPORTED IN TIME 7.95 TONS FOR SOUPMAKER PHILLIPS’ DELECTABLE CONCOCTIONS AND 1.10 TONS MARKETED ELSEWHERE. THE COMBINED YIELD REPRESENTS NEARLY DOUBLE THE NORMAL YIELD IN THE U. S. DESPITE MOST UNFAVORABLE WEATHER CONDITIONS. BUT FOR ABNORMALITIES OF TEMPERATURE AND RAINFALL DURING THE GROWTNG SEASON TOMATOGROWER CHRYSLER WOULD EASILY HAVE EATEN TERRAPIN AT MY TABLE. URGE THAT JUSTICE BE DONE THIS GENTLEMAN-FARMER AND MOTOR-MANUFACTURER FOR A NOBLE EFFORT AND A GOOD JOB WELL DONE.

SOUPMAKER ALBANUS PHILLIPS

Phillips Packing Company

Cambridge, Md.

May Tomatoman Chrysler and Soupman Phillips heartily enjoy their terrapin. —ED.

Teamster in Marble

Sirs:

You missed one dramatic incident in the history of Greenough’s George Washington [TIME, Nov. 19]. Quite naturally you missed it, for I believe I am the single custodian of a visual memory of the event I have in mind. It was on a winter day back in 1908. Late in the afternoon I crossed Pennsylvania Avenue at Twelfth Street. Not only was the air crisp, but a gusty wind was swirling a sudden downpour of snow. Up the avenue from the Capitol came a huge dray drawn by six white Percherons—an unusually large hitch even for those horse days. Reaching the sidewalk I turned to give a second glance and then burst into uproarious laughter. . . . Greenough’s George Washington had appeared through the haze of snow, and towering there ten feet high, naked to the waist, one arm raised to heaven, riding in state to a fitting limbo of an obscure storage niche in the Museum, seemed to be driving that six-horse team!

J. SIDNEY GATES

Cherrydale, Va.

Sirs:

The article headed “Undressed Father” in your issue of Nov. 19 reminds me that during the period when Greenough’s statue of Washington was displayed on the Capitol plaza, many years ago a friend of mine bestowed on it the title “Washington Begging for His Clothes.”

JAMES M. PICKENS

Washington, D. C.

A. M. A. Defended

Sirs: It is easy to understand why Judith Ewell, in TIME of Nov. 19, directs her resentment at the doctors who were unable to prevent her mother from dying of cancer, rather than at Nature or God or whatever it is that inflicts cancer upon mankind. “Human Nature” demands a human scapegoat. … As a doctor myself, I can understand and sympathize with Judith Ewell’s reaction, but at the same time I am sick and tired of hearing the medical profession publicly blamed for the wrong faults, while the ever-patient doctors sit by and keep silent. God knows, medicine has faults in plenty, but they are scarcely ever those attacked by laymen.

Does Judith Ewell, or anyone else, really believe that doctors are reluctant to reveal new cures for hitherto incurable diseases, or unwilling to use them when they are discovered? I only wish that people of this opinion, if they truly exist, could have been aware of the deep joy and the renewed confidence that swept over the whole medical world when the fact of Insulin was made known to it! …

This longing for new cures has been a curse to medicine, for doctors are always overeager. . . . Overenthusiasm for new cures has killed more patients than any medical association’s hesitancy in releasing them to practicing physicians. It is simply to prevent the abuse of new “cures” that the A. M. A. tests and retests all discoveries in therapeutics. To doctors, this is all an old, sad, and slightly boring story. Medical history is full of false alarms—even the useful remedies, newly discovered, go through a period of abuse inevitably, and many have been allowed to drop from usage because their earlier, too glowing, promises were not fulfilled. Others, abused to dangerous degree, were dropped to be rediscovered later and their true value recognized. Such, in one way or another, is the story of digitalis, of quinidine, of many sera, of insulin, dinitrophenol, and perhaps the barbiturates.

But let nobody suppose that doctors do not long, passionately and wholeheartedly and unanimously, for a cure of cancer: nor that hundreds of able men are not working all their lives long (frequently at the most miserable salaries, or none at all), upon this formidable, incredibly complicated, and thus far insoluble problem. . . .

WILLIAM TOD HELMUTH 3RD, M. D.

New York City

Man of the Year (Cont’d)

Sirs: …

By a process of elimination it … looks to me as if Roosevelt had done it again—made the Jan. 7 front cover, I mean. . . . He has proven himself a masterly politician as well as a resourceful statesman, that he is gradually coordinating the diverse interests of a great country, and that, above all, he is trying—and succeeding in making all of us think a little less about our selfish selves and a little more about our less fortunate neighbors. . . .

VERNON B. TWITCHELL

Tilton, N. Il.

Sirs:

[For] his unflinching spirit of self-sacrifice, his dauntless devotion to party, his tact and diplomacy, his untiring service to his chief, the efficient administration of his office, the bold and unashamed practice of his religion at all times, I place in nomination as TIME’S “Man of the Year’ Postmaster General and National Chairman James A. Farley. . . .

J. E. CASSEL

Maryville, Mo.

Sirs:

. . . The “Man of the Year” can be neither a figment of fear nor a national entity. If the first were possible, Death would easily sweep the field. At midyear, Austria’s minuscule Chancellor Dollfuss and France’s benevolent Foreign Minister Louis Barthou were two of the most potent powers for the peace of the world. Even sturdy old Reichsprasident von Hindenburg still held within his fist a huge pen which could yet wield tremendous influence for peace and independence. But within a few months assassins’ bullets had laid low the first two of these candidates, and debility the third. And to no wraith can be awarded the laurels of a Time which inexorably marches on.

If the second were possible, John Bull would vie for honors. By mid-year the collective efforts of millions of Great Britain’s citizens had lifted that nation well out of the slough of Depression by its own bootstraps, labeled Currency Control and Economic Nationalism. But no single Briton stood head and shoulders above the crowd. . . .

Truly great was the power of 1932’s “Man of the Year,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But to impartial observers it seemed that his 1934 efforts must be judged by the event—that despite his accumulation of a vast personal prestige, the body blows being directed at some of the less workable phases of his New Deal would retard by at least a year an accurate evaluation of his stewardship. And yet so far did Roosevelt’s influence outshine that of all his countrymen that the U. S. presented little difficulty to the 1934 “Man-of-the-Year” picker. The simple formula was: Nisi Roosevelt, nemo [Unless Roosevelt, no one].

A hypothetical “Man of the Year” from Japan was ruled out because of the fact that no Japanese of prominence was standing foursquare for anything but War. And unless some German churchman or other independent were to electrify the world in the last six weeks of the year by rendering the Reich persona grata to her sister nations, no German could qualify as standing foursquare for personal freedom. . . .

To Italy a vision of a new life was dawning. Since the Industrial Revolution no nation had sought to rule itself by power drawn directly from its factories, banks and grain elevators until in the closing months of 1934 Benito Mussolini set into motion his Corporative State. . . .

Of the two Ncw Deals spread out upon the world’s green table in 1933-34, Italy’s was even more the handiwork of one man. Benito Mussolini had already had a good year. He was even more of Italy’s cabinet than before. He had sealed his final peace with his country’s Church. He had advanced his plans for increasing Italy’s marriage and birth rates, making its cities more habitable, improving the status of its farmers, moppets, airmen, spinsters.

In his country’s relations with other nations it was becoming evident that Mussolini can talk war and mean peace, and that to Rome the other nations of Europe must look to learn when a rumor of war might mean war. His dispatching of troops to the Austrian border may have prevented a Nazi invasion of Austria, as also may have his conversations with Dollfuss and Hitler, and more recently with Schuschnigg. And they came to him. not he to them. He seems to have been lucky enough to escape from further Yugoslavian recriminations over the assassination of Alexander because of revelations from Hungary. And well is it to remember that the only diplomatic victory of the year over Japan, of any sort whatever, was his in the matter of the Ethiopian betrothal.

I give you Italy’s Benito Mussolini as 1934’s “Man of the Year.” CHARLES CASSIL REYNARD

Girard, Ohio

Sirs:

For the “Man of 1934,” I urge above all Thomas H. Morgan of California Institute of Technology, the Nobel Prize winner in Medicine. . . . Fifty years from now, when the significance of his discoveries penetrates the popular mind, he will be ranked in history with Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin.

SCOTT McREYNOLDS

Los Angeles, Calif.

Sirs:

For “Man of the Year” I nominate Herbert Hoover for the following reasons, to wit:

He gave us the Great Depression, a stupendous feat for one man, unaided and alone.

Those who saved the country from Mr. Hoover may beat their breasts and cry “What a good boy am I.” Otherwise, how would we know that the country had been saved?

I nominate Mr. Hoover because “the wrath of man shall praise him.”

1 nominate Mr. Hoover because his enemies dare not let him alone!

(MRS.)AGNES MOSLEY CLEAVELAND

Berkeley, Calif.

Sirs:

I nominate for your “Man of the Year,” Huey P. Long. Why? Hell—read the papers.

D. B. DENBY

Carlinville, Ill.

Sirs:

I nominate Huey Long. . . .

America’s fieriest lawyer, Washington’s smartest politician.

Roosevelt’s barometer of the Left Wing, Master of the filibuster. Operates at large. No portfolio. No microphone on a national hookup.

C. H. McWILLIAMS

Wilmington, Ohio

Courteous Patrolmen

Sirs:

Interesting but incomplete was your summary of Great Britain’s Royal Automobile Club patrols, TIME, Nov. 26, p. 20.

Patrolmen are forbidden by law to stop Automobile Association or R. A. C. members and warn them of speed traps ahead. In the smart salute rendered whenever a member’s car flashes by lies the key to the evasion of this law. In pamphlet issued to members on how to use R. A. C. service is paragraph urging members to insist upon courtesy of salute, bids them stop where failure to do so on part of patrolman is obvious and inquire reason therefor.

Thus interrogated, patrolmen are at liberty to warn member-motorist of speed trap ahead.

PAUL GALLICO

New York City